Awe Star’s trips across the border to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, take us back to the roots of this ministry when our founder, Dr. Walker Moore, first began taking students while still serving as a youth pastor. He noticed the huge difference the mission trips made in the students’ lives, so he kept taking groups back to Mexico to serve. What started as a student trip to one county has now become a multi-national ministry with trips for students, medical teams, and others.

This Saturday, March 16, Awe Star will return to Nuevo Laredo on our annual spring break trip. We already have many prayer needs and—even if you’re not able to join us on the field—we would love for you to partner with us in prayer! Here are seven prayer points to guide you before and during our spring break trip, March 16-23:

1. Preparation: Ask that we would have everything we need for our final preparations. This includes students packing and preparing at home and our office staff, who must make sure drama costumes are ready, food supplies are purchased, vans are available and ready, and attend to many more last-minute details. Most of all, ask God to go before us and prepare the way for the ministry He desires.

2. Travel: Travel to, from, and within the country must all be covered in prayer. We drive to Nuevo Laredo, leaving before dawn on Saturday morning, March 16. Pray for our drivers, our vehicles, our border crossing, and travel within the country as we move from drama site to drama site. Pray for safety and sweet fellowship as we go and tell.

3. Focus and Unity: The students will learn our 18-minute pantomime drama, “Freedom,” soon after we arrive in Nuevo Laredo. They have only a short time to memorize and practice it before heading out to share the gospel. Pray for attentive focus, ease in memorization, and true unity throughout the week so the drama can serve as a creative and effective tool for the kingdom.

4. Leadership: Please pray for our country coordinators and team directors as well as our POPs and MOMs (male and female small group leaders). These different levels of leadership include different levels of responsibility for making sure the mission is carried out, the students are safe and well cared for, and that genuine discipleship takes place. Ask God to grant them an extra measure of wisdom, especially as they must often deal with the unexpected.

5. Connections with Believers: Please pray for Pastor Nicolas Alba and the other church leaders and translators with whom we will work. Ask God to bless them for the time they give us and for His favor on their lives and families. Ask that their ministries, their churches, and their kingdom influence would grow exponentially.

6. Divine Encounters: When a willing witness meets a seeking soul, it creates what we call a divine encounter, which opens the door to sharing the gospel. Pray for many such divine encounters from start to finish of this trip. Often, it’s the most unexpected divine encounters and the most unlikely situations that become the best places for the gospel to take root and grow.

7. Lasting Impact: Pray that the influence of this trip will be felt far beyond spring break 2019 in the lives of the missionaries who have chosen to leave home and family behind, in the lives of the nationals who work with us, and especially in the lives of the people we serve and lead to Christ. Ask God to allow the reverberations of this trip to echo into eternity.